Pat Cooper, stand-up comic who mined his Italian roots, dies at 93
Pat Cooper, an acerbic stand-up comedian who mocked his Italian American heritage with one-liners about garlic and eggplants, winning him comparisons to Alan King and Jackie Mason's routines about nagging Jewish mothers, died June 6 at his home in Las Vegas. He was 93.
His wife, Emily Conner, confirmed the death but did not provide a cause.
In appearances on the "The Ed Sullivan Show," in opening acts for Ginger Rogers and Frank Sinatra, and onstage in Atlantic City and Las Vegas, Mr. Cooper dressed in a tuxedo and told rapid-fire jokes - mostly about Italian families - in a heavy (and fake) accent. The Oxford English Dictionary credits him with coining the phrase "bada-bing."
Mr. Cooper's big break came on "The Jackie Gleason Show" in 1963. His set was about his wedding. "I'm in Venice with my wife," he deadpanned. "We're sitting in a gondola. I'm playing in the water. I come up with an eggplant."
He could tie just about anything to being Italian, including golf.
"I don't fish," he told the Philadelphia Inquirer, echoing one of his bits. "The way I see it is that fish don't come into my house and I don't go into their water. Then there's golf. That's all hear - golf, golf, golf. What's the big deal about putting a little ball in a little hole on the green? The only greens we Italians have an interest in are the greens that you eat."
Mr. Cooper released several albums, including "Spaghetti Sauce and Other Delights," the cover of which shows him shirtless and covered in red sauce and pasta, a riff on the cover of Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass's "Whipped Cream and Other Delights," which features a woman covered in whipped cream.
He sometimes used other ethnic stereotypes to elevate Italian Americans.
"Do you realize that the Jewish people consume more Italian food than any nationality on the face of this earth?" he joked on one of his albums. "And the Jewish people consume more Chinese food than any nationality on the face of this earth. If they stop eating, they close down two countries."
In 1996, Mr. Cooper played himself on an episode of "Seinfeld." He also appeared in the 1999 movie comedy "Analyze This" with Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal and the 2002 sequel "Analyze That."
He was also a frequent guest on Howard Stern's radio show, including an infamous train-wreck episode in which he got into a heated argument with his son, with whom he was estranged.
Stern eventually became one of Mr. Cooper's many enemies, a list that also included Sinatra (who asked him to change a joke), Joan Rivers ("She keeps changing her body, but it ain't going to help," he once said) and Geraldo Rivera ("I call him a scumbag every time I get the chance").
Whether the hate was real is anyone's guess.
"Controversy is good," he told the New York Times. "Every time it happens, my price goes up."
Pasquale Vito Caputo was born in Brooklyn on July 31, 1929. He changed his name during the 1960s when he began performing. His father was a bricklayer, and his mother was a homemaker.
In his routine, he would describe a tough father, recalling how he once asked him whether they could go on vacation. "The next day," Mr. Cooper said, "he pushed me out on the fire escape, closed the window and said 'You're on vacation.'"
It started raining. He yelled to his father asking to come inside.
"I can't hear you," his father said. "You're on vacation."
Mr. Cooper was drafted into the Army in 1952 but was discharged following some poor behavior, he wrote in his autobiography. He laid bricks for 12 years, performing routines at weekend parties before he began working as a comic at local clubs.
His personal life was frequently a mess.
His first marriage, to Dolores Nola, ended in divorce. They had two children, Michael and Louise Caputo, with whom Mr. Cooper was estranged.
In addition to the argument on Stern's show, Mr. Cooper and his son fought on Rivera's television show in 1990.
"The truth about my father is that he's never been there as a father, nor has he represented any kind of role model to me for the last 30 years," said Caputo, who also wrote a book about their relationship. "Pat Cooper's image is a lie that he sold to the American public by turning his back on his own flesh and blood."
"Let me tell you something," Mr. Cooper told his son. "I don't have to be your father, you're not that thrilling." Then he began repeatedly yelling, "I don't want to be your father."
Mr. Cooper was married to his second wife, the singer Patti Del Prince, for 41 years. She died in 2005.
Survivors include his wife; his children from his first marriage; a daughter from his second marriage, Patti Jo Weidenfeld; and several grandchildren.
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